[sugar] Dependencies (was [Activities] Tux Typing on OLPC XO)

[pgf at laptop.org]

bert wrote:
 > See
 > 
 > http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Activity_bundles#Bundling_Native_Libraries

it sure seems like there should be a way for an activity to
specify a yum'able rpm, and have the system make sure that's
installed, along with any secondary dependencies.  seems
preferable to having activities drag along possibly redundant, or
obsolete, copies of libraries.  i guess the activity would need
to suggest apt-get'able names as well, for non-fedora-based
installations.

as an example, older versions of RoadMap used to include libexpat
because i think it wasn't in 656.  i happened to notice that it
was included in later releases, so i dropped it from the activity
bundle, but if i hadn't noticed, it would have been a complete
waste of space, on disk, and possibly in memory.  (actually, i'm
not sure how the loader deals with conflicting library versions --
could it perhaps even cause a conflict?  not sure about that.)

[ hmmm.  all this begs the question:  what happens to activities when
someone ports sugar to an incompatible architecture:  a bsd variant,
macos, or even non-x86 linux.  binary activities (and certainly
any libraries they bring along) will cease working -- do we have
an versioning mechanism to keep things sane in that scenario? ]

paul

 > 
 > - Bert -
 > 
 > Am 20.10.2008 um 15:20 schrieb Brian Jordan:
 > 
 > > How should dependencies like TuxType's be handled?
 > >
 > > (found list at http://sophie.zarb.org/rpm/Momonga,4,x86_64/tuxtype/deps 
 > >  )
 > >
 > > Thanks
 > > Brian
 > >
 > > ---------- Forwarded message ----------
 > > From: David Bruce <davidstuartbruce at gmail.com>
 > > Date: Mon, Oct 20, 2008 at 7:39 AM
 > > Subject: [Activities] Tux Typing on OLPC XO
 > > To: activities at lists.laptop.org
 > > Cc: cynthia at media.mit.edu
 > >
 > >
 > > Hello,
 > >
 > > I maintain two of the Tux4Kids apps, Tux Typing and TuxMath.  At the
 > > request of the OLPC project, I have been working on getting Tux Typing
 > > to run well on the XO.  I have completed the most important changes
 > > needed for Tux Typing itself, and it is now time to address bundling
 > > it as a Sugar activity.  Tux Typing is a C program with a number of
 > > library dependencies, not all of which are in the XO base setup.
 > >
 > > Where can I look for info on this topic?
 > >
 > > David Bruce
 > 
 > _______________________________________________
 > Sugar mailing list
 > Sugar at lists.laptop.org
 > http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/sugar

=---------------------
 paul fox, pgf at laptop.org